Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, data, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, 3GPP LTE systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communication system can simultaneously support communication for multiple wireless terminals. Each terminal communicates with one or more base stations via transmissions on the forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals (e.g., a mobile station), and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations. This communication link may be established via a single input-single output (SISO), multiple input-single output (MISO) or a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system.
A MIMO system employs multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. A MIMO channel formed by the NT transmit and NR receive antennas may be decomposed into NS independent channels, which are also referred to as spatial channels, where NS≦min {NT, NR}. Each of the NS independent channels corresponds to a dimension. The MIMO system can provide improved performance (e.g., higher throughput and/or greater reliability) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and receive antennas are utilized. For example, a MIMO system can support time division duplex (TDD) and frequency division duplex (FDD) systems. In a TDD system, the forward and reverse link transmissions are on the same frequency region so that the reciprocity principle allows the estimation of the forward link channel from the reverse link channel. This enables the access point to extract transmit beamforming gain on the forward link when multiple antennas are available at the access point.
Wireless communication systems are subject to various channel perturbations and noise disturbances which are introduced somewhere in the wireless link. These imperfections result in errors in the data processed by a receiver. In general, there are two broad categories of error control applicable to wireless communication systems, error detection and error correction. Error detection techniques, such as automatic repeat request (ARQ), typically add a few redundant bits to a transmit data frame for the purpose of error detection. If an error is detected, the receiver typically sends back an error detection message to the transmitter to request a retransmission of the same transmit data frame. In contrast, error correction techniques, such as forward error correction (FEC), typically add more redundant bits in a structured manner to a transmit data frame for the purpose of error correction. Error correction allows the receiver to both detect and correct received errors, without feedback and retransmission. Depending on the channel error characteristics and throughput versus latency requirements on the system, error detection or error correction might be preferred.